Flurry of House Dems looks back on indictment investigation as caucus plans to debate whistleblower issue in Ukraine

Just one day later, Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi strongly suggested that she urges the imposition of the dismissal of President Trump, a group of Democrats. swing district key on Monday night, showed its mass support after the opening of a formal dismissal investigation.

The quick-fire statements of the influential Democrats, apparently after months of flickering on the edge of the precipice, came as Democratic House leaders scheduled a meeting for Tuesday afternoon on how to deal with a police pitcher's claim. explosive alert regarding the phone call from the president with the Ukrainian president been past.

"The horse is out of the stable," said a former investigator and strategist Hillary Clinton Geoff Garin. "Saddle."

S addressing Fox News, an aide to the Democratic Party in the House, said the trade – without condemning the president – would put forward the Democrats' agenda at a caucus meeting on Wednesday. A new meeting on Tuesday to specifically discuss the case of Ukraine is planned, Fox News was told.

"The dominant focus of Wednesday's caucus is trade," said the assistant at Fox News. "A second caucus has been added to allow enough time for members to discuss the issue of whistleblowers and several other urgent issues on Tuesday afternoon."

Seven first-year centrist Democrats who served in the military and national security announced Monday in an editorial that if Trump was pressuring the Ukrainian president for that he would investigate his rival Joe Biden for purposes policies, he is irreproachable. Legislators – Representatives Gil Cisneros of California, Jason Crow of Colorado, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Elaine Luria of Virginia, Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia – come largely from swing quarters where Trump is popular but voters are divided.

Democrats wrote in the Washington Post that they "did not come to this conclusion lightly".

"The horse is out of the barn. Ride on horseback."

– Geoff Garin

Later in the night, Democrat Senator of Hawaii Brian Schatz and Democratic Representative of Michigan Debbie Dingell also supported an impeachment investigation.

"On behalf of the people who elected us, we must formalize and accelerate the impeachment process so that Congress, by exercising its responsibilities under Article 1 of the Constitution, can provide some responsibility," said Schatz in a statement.

The proliferation of movements brings to 154 the number of Democrats in the House who have shown their strong support for a possible impeachment procedure. (235 Democrats and 198 Republicans sit in the House, with an independent – and a majority would be necessary to successfully remove the president. An improbable two-thirds vote in the GOP-controlled Senate would be required to convict and dismiss the president.)

Democrats have presented differing views, both in court and in public, as to whether or not impeachment proceedings are already under way. The new push launched on Monday could convince the remaining Democrats to openly call their efforts to an impeachment investigation.

At the same time, a report released Monday at Politico on Monday suggests that Democrats could vote on a resolution condemning Trump for pressuring Ukrainian leaders to investigate possible corruption of Joe Biden's son, Hunter, related to its commercial relations in the country.

And the Washington Post reported in the evening that Pelosi was looking for members of the Democratic caucus to see if it was time to dismiss the president.

However, earlier on Monday, a person familiar with the situation told Fox News that the whistleblower in question did not have "direct knowledge" of Trump's conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The source stated that the complaint itself clearly indicated that the whistleblower did not have direct knowledge of the July phone call.

Fox News has learned that, in general, many US officials would have such calls with the president, but that would indicate that the whistleblower was not one of those people. It is not known if the person has read a transcript of the call, has heard of it in a conversation or has read it otherwise.

SOURCE TO FOX NEWS: THE ADVERTISER HAS NOT HIS KNOWLEDGE TO THE FIRST HAND OF THE TRUMP CALL

Nevertheless, the Democrats insisted on the issue, even though it might turn around by exposing the potential wrongdoings of the former vice president.

"The Republican Senate sees no evil and does not mean" is unacceptable and must change, "said Senate Chuck Schumer, leader of the Senate minority on Monday, before the Senate. solemn obligation, there is no room for maneuver here, no. "

Earlier in the day, the New York Democrat wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell asking him to subpoena and hold hearings on the complaint.

In a floor speech on Monday afternoon, the Kentucky Republican rejected the Democrats' calls, saying the Senate Intelligence Committee was following an established process and was working to hear the Inspector General of the intelligence community this week .

"It is unfortunate that the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee [Adam] Schiff and Senator Schumer chose to politicize the issue, "McConnell said, calling for a" proper, deliberate and bipartisan "review of the issue.

At least one Republican lawmaker has also called for the publication of the transcript of Trump's appeal.

"At this point, given the seriousness of the allegations, it is very important that the transcript and the whistleblower be published," said Republican Senator of Utah, Mitt Romney, spokesperson Trump's casual and rival single to the presidency.

UKRAINE BEGINS IN THE SENATE BASIN

At the same time, the most reputable Republicans, including California's Devin Nunes, have predicted in interviews with Fox News that this tactic would backfire against Democrats.

In an exclusive interview with Fox News's "Hannity" on Monday, Vice President Mike Pence said the Democrats' accusations were about to turn into a boomerang.

"The ironic thing is that all that our critics in the media have criticized against the president since this phone call and against our administration, all that Capitol Hill's Democrats escape and describe – Vice President Joe Biden 'is touted – – who was a quid-pro-quo – retaining US help in return for a specific action,' said Pence.

In the late evening, Trump issued a similar note. tweeting The "real story" was that "Sleepy Joe Biden" had "forced a hard prosecutor to investigate his son's business by threatening not to give big dollars to Ukraine".

Indeed, the allegation of the whistleblower could lead to a scrutiny of the Obama administration's policy in Ukraine. The former vice president told the camera that in March 2016, he had privately threatened incumbent President Petro Poroshenko that the United States would retain $ 1 billion in loan guarantees. Ukraine if the Attorney General in question was not dismissed.

"I said:" You will not touch the billion, "told Biden to Poroshenko at a meeting of the Council of Foreign Relations." I will leave here, I think it was about six o'clock. I looked at them and said: "I'm leaving in six hours. If the attorney is not returned, you do not get the money. & # 39; "

"Well, son of father, he was fired," Biden continued, after reassuring Poroshenko that Obama was aware of this arrangement. "And, they set up someone who was solid at the time."

FLASHBACK: IN APRIL, TRUMP SAYS HILLARY-UKRAINE LARGE CLAIMS OF CLAIMS WILL BE "INVESTIGATED"

It was still unclear whether this was directly related to the prosecutor's investigation into the company related to Hunter Biden, as other countries also reportedly requested that the prosecutor discontinue.

At the same time, Trump acknowledged Sunday that he had contacted Zelensky about Biden and that the conversation was about "the ongoing corruption and especially the fact that we do not want our people as Vice President Biden and his son. [contributing] to corruption already in Ukraine ".

The president and senior officials said Sunday that nothing untimely had occurred during this call.

The whipping drama began after the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Trump had repeatedly asked Zelenskiy to investigate Hunter Biden, who played a key role in a natural gas company on which a Ukrainian prosecutor had been investigating. part of a corruption investigation.

Trump's conversation took place while his administration held $ 250 million worth of military aid to Ukraine, money that the White House then made public. The president said he hoped the European countries would pay more for their own defense and denied delaying any funding for military aid.

At a conference two years after his departure, Joe Biden boasted of pressuring Ukraine that she would dismiss that attorney while he was vice-president.

Acting National Intelligence Director Joseph Maguire is scheduled to testify before the House Intelligence Committee at a public hearing on Thursday. Democrats have asked for the whistleblower's full complaint and the whistleblower's testimony.

"If the Administration persists in preventing the whistleblower from disclosing to Congress a potentially serious breach of constitutional obligations on the part of the President, he will enter a new chapter of anarchy that will take us to a new stage of Investigation, "said Pelosi, D -Calif., Warned Sunday. "Thank you for your patriotism."

Pelosi continued, "We must ensure that the president and his administration always conduct our national security and foreign policy in the best interests of the American people, not in the personal or political interest of the president."

Speaking before CNN's "State of the Union", Adam Schiff, chairman of the Intelligence Committee of the House of Representatives of D-Calif, also said the dismissal was on the table. . Previously, Schiff had claimed to have hard evidence that the Trump team had unduly been heard with Russia.

"Why does not the President just say," Free the whistleblower complaint. "It's clear that he's afraid the public will see," Schiff said. "This would be the most profound violation of the presidential oath, certainly during the presidency, which speaks volumes, but perhaps during any presidency.No privilege covers corruption.There is no privilege to engage sneaky discussions. "

The rhetoric of the best Democrats came shortly after the Ocasio-Cortez Republic of Alexandria on Saturday night, which kicked off a dormant, but long-simmering quarrel that was sometimes explosive, with the best Democrats in the House, in the form of a fiery fire. tweet: "At this stage, the most important national scandal is not the president's behavior against the law – it's the Democratic Party's refusal to deny it."

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Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez, NS, appeared to be concluding a truce after a closed meeting in July, in which both sought to ease the internal conflicts that some Democrats considered counterproductive. This meeting took place shortly before the departure of Ocasio-Cortez's Chef de Cabinet, Saikat Chakrabarti.

Alex Pappas, Jake Gibson and Fox News Associated Press contributed to this report.